The Grand Election Thread

[CountDeMoney]

Devolving FEMA to the states is the single worst policy proposal this entire election season that did not involve Michelle Bachmann.

Does Romney support that? Don't see how he'd still be ahead in Florida. 

See for yourself.

http://youtu.be/oqXk5XxHKx8

47 seconds' worth.  Kinda ironical.

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

Of course, like SNL's skit this past weekend noted, he said that when it was sunny out.

[MadImmortalMan]

There are news crews in town from Japan and UK.

[mongers]

There are news crews in town from Japan and UK.

Cleveland OH ?

[celedhring]

Something to get CdM's juices flowing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QdpGd74DrBM&noredirect=1

I suppose the machine is just shoddily built.

[CountDeMoney]

Something to get CdM's juices flowing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QdpGd74DrBM&noredirect=1

I suppose the machine is just shoddily built.

Imagine that.

[Kleves]

Pundit predictions!

Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight: Obama 303, Romney 235. "The model estimates that Mr. Romney would need to win the national popular vote by about one percentage point to avert a tossup, or a loss, in the Electoral College," Silver writes.

Sam Wang, Princeton Election Consortium: Obama 303, Romney 235. "In terms of EV or the Meta-margin, [Obama has] made up just about half the ground he ceded to Romney after Debate #1."

Drew Linzer, Emory University: Obama 326, Romney 212. "The accuracy of my election forecasts depend on the accuracy of the presidential polls," Linzer writes. "As such, a major concern heading into Election Day is the possibility that polling firms, out of fear of being wrong, are looking at the results of other published surveys and weighting or adjusting their own results to match."

Michael Barone, The Examiner: Romney 315, Obama 223. "Both national and target state polls show that independents, voters who don't identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans, break for Romney."

Ezra Klein, The Washington Post: Obama 290, Romney 248. "I have a simple rule when predicting presidential elections: The polls, taken together, are typically pretty accurate. Systemic problems, while possible, aren't likely."

Larry Sabato, UVA Center for Politics: Obama 290, Romney 248. "Who could have imagined that a Frankenstorm would act as a circuit-breaker on the Republican's campaign, blowing Romney off center stage for three critical days in the campaign's last week, while enabling Obama to dominate as presidential comforter-in-chief, assisted by his new bipartisan best friend, Gov. Chris Christie (R)?"

Josh Putnam, Davidson College: Obama 332, Romney 206. "Everything above is based on a graduated weighted average of polls in each state conducted in 2012," Putnam wrote in explaining his methodology. "The weighting is based on how old a poll is. The older the poll is the more it is discounted. The most recent poll is given full weight."

Jay Cost, Weekly Standard: Romney victory. "For two reasons," Cost writes. "(1) Romney leads among voters on trust to get the economy going again. (2) Romney leads among independents."

Philip Klein, The Examiner: Obama 277, Romney 261. "I've given Romney the states that are essentially tied, in which he's led in at least some recent polls. But in states where Romney has trailed in nearly all polls, and in some cases by a comfortable margin, I'm giving them to Obama."

Ross Douthat, New York Times: Obama 271, Romney 267. " In general, I think that the political class tends to overestimate the power of the Hispanic bloc, whose influence is growing more slowly than many pundits and strategists acknowledge. In general, I think that the political class tends to overestimate swing voters' sympathy for strident social liberalism, and to imagine a lockstep support for legal abortion among female voters that doesn't actually exist."

Simon Jackman, Stanford University: Obama 332, Romney 206. "The model uses poll data (and house effect corrections) to generate estimates of Obama and Romney levels of support in the states (and at the national level). The modeling is done simultaneously: if you will, there are up to 52 latent quantities (e.g., Obama support in 50 states, the District of Columbia, plus the national level) moving over time, with polls giving us (noisy) snapshots as to where the latent targets might be on any given day."

Kenneth Bickers, University of Colorado and Kevin Berry, CU-Denver: Romney 330, Obama 208. "While many election forecast models are based on the popular vote, the model developed by Bickers and Berry is based on the Electoral College and is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions."

Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect: Obama 303, Romney 235. "If Obama wins on Tuesday, the political science on debates will have won out; they can shift the short-term situation, but they don't fundamentally change the direction of an election."

George Will, The Washington Post: Romney 321, Obama 217. " I guess the wild card in what I've projected is I'm projecting Minnesota to go for Romney. Now, that's the only state in the union, because Mondale held it — native son Mondale held it when Romney was — when Reagan was getting 49 states — the only state that's voted Democratic in nine consecutive elections. But this year, there's a marriage amendment on the ballot that will bring out the evangelicals and I think could make the difference."

Ben Domenech, The Transom: Romney 278, Obama 260. "In sum, I see the bottom slipping out from under Obama's feet, and a campaign hoping to hold on just long enough to salvage a slim victory, one where he is almost certain to lose the popular vote. He is underperforming among whites and independents, and particularly among those likeliest to vote. I have never believed in running the prevent defense, and Obama has been running it for months."

Markos Moulitsas: Obama 332, Romney 206. "Currently, national polling assumes a big dropoff from registered voters to likely voters. I don't believe that'll be the case, and we're certainly not seeing it in the early vote—Democratic turnout is up. And the RV models have been more accurate historically."

Karl Rove: Romney 285, Obama 253. He's got Romney winning Ohio, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, and Florida.

Xu Cheng, Moodys' Analytics: Obama 303, Romney 235. Note that this prediction was made back in February: "This prediction is tied to the Moody's Analytics current baseline forecast for U.S. growth, which assumes that most states will continue to recover at slow to moderate speeds."

James Pethokoukis: Romney 301, Obama 227. "Many pollsters are not catching the stratospheric GOP enthusiasm, particularly among voters of faith, in voting for Romney and Paul Ryan — not just against Obama and Joe Biden. In this way, the Bush-Kerry parallel from 2004 does not hold up"

Joe Trippi, Democratic consultant, Obama 303, Romney 235. Trippi sent in his by e-mail–he's going with these states.

Dick Morris, FoxNews: Romney 325, Obama 213. "It will be the biggest surprise in recent American political history," Morris said. "It will rekindle the whole question on why the media played this race as a nailbiter where in fact Romney's going to win by quite a bit."

Jim Cramer, CNBC: Obama 440, Romney 98. Here's a tweet from Cramer: "No one is going to recall the guy who picks Obama by 10 electorals if it turns out to be 150 margin. Believe me."

Dean Chambers, UnskewedPolls.com: Romney 275, Obama 263. "Many others in the media project very favorable maps and projections for Obama but those doing so fail to realize or accept how heavily-skewed polls distort any average or analysis that relies on them."

Also, Fox News has just called the election for Romney.

[Neil]

Devolving FEMA to the states is the single worst policy proposal this entire election season that did not involve Michelle Bachmann.

Not only to the states to fend for themselves, but with the additional bonus of privatization.  I am curious, however, how a for-profit private sector company would see a payoff in disaster recovery.  Recoup from insurers?  Bill the disaster-stricken?  Would the states get a bill from Haliburton or KBR? Or is it all going to be "faith-based"?

What I don't get is how, considering the nature of emergency management since 9/11, the idea of delegating it to the states--especially after Katrina--would even be considered.  It's one thing to respond to a localized, specific incident such as 9/11, Oklahoma City or the WTC in '92, but Katrina (and soon to be Sandy) is now the new model:  what happens when an incident is of such a magnitude that local government is, in effect, rendered incapacitated (New Orleans), and the state in question is broke/incompetent/ineffectual (Louisiana)?  Florida may be able to handle a hurricane better on its own than, say, Louisiana or Mississippi, because it's far wealthier, but we don't pick where hurricanes land;  Mother Nature does.  And we're just talking natural disasters, people forget the post-9/11 concerns regarding chemical or radiological terror-related events.

There's only so much resiliency that can be built into municipal and state models.

I think that the plan was to go to the Gilded Age model:  Anyone who isn't killed outright by the disaster or the related shortages/lawlessness will starve to death when they can't find work.

Mind you, it seems much more likely to me that all that talk about FEMA is bullshit designed to trick the Republican faithful into voting for him.  It's more useful to pay attention to his actions as a governor than it would be to pay attention to the things he says to the idiot wing of his party.  Obama did the same thing in 2008 when he was talking about renegotiating NAFTA (although it was harder to decipher that as bullshit as Obama's inexperience precluded us from going to his record).

[crazy canuck]

Also, Fox News has just called the election for Romney.

[CountDeMoney]

Mind you, it seems much more likely to me that all that talk about FEMA is bullshit designed to trick the Republican faithful into voting for him. 

Well, considering that the Dumbfuckistanis along the Gulf Coast keep sending representatives and senators to DC to consistently vote against it, as well as electing Republican governors that poo-poo it, it's not like there's that much bullshit involved.

[garbon]

http://live.nydailynews.com/Event/Obama_v_Romney_Election_Day_Nov_6_2012_-_Live_from_the_polls

"One lady said 'I'm voting for Romney because I don't vote for imbeciles like Obama."

[Caliga]

Also, Fox News has just called the election for Romney.

Where?  I just checked their website and didn't see anything.

[Neil]

Mind you, it seems much more likely to me that all that talk about FEMA is bullshit designed to trick the Republican faithful into voting for him. 

Well, considering that the Dumbfuckistanis along the Gulf Coast keep sending representatives and senators to DC to consistently vote against it, as well as electing Republican governors that poo-poo it, it's not like there's that much bullshit involved.

None of those guys are Mitt Romney though.  Romney's not an idiot, he's just a little bit callous.

[celedhring]

Irish bookie Paddypower calling it for Obama and paying out the bets already.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/06/obama-wins-paddy-power-irish-bookmaker-pays-bets_n_2081975.html

[Caliga]

Irish bookie Paddypower calling it for Obama and paying out the bets already.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/06/obama-wins-paddy-power-irish-bookmaker-pays-bets_n_2081975.html

[Kleves]

Where?  I just checked their website and didn't see anything.

I was being facetious.